In this thread debating the reasons for Japan’s relatively rapid industrialization (once it set its mind to it, so to speak), Lumpy said (in post #4):
I had never really thought about that before, i.e. that Japan was almost unique in not being colonized and/or exploited by foreign powers.
Why was it the case that Japan, almost alone among nations in the region, was not colonized (or even opened up to trade earlier)?
I understand that the nation itself did not wish to have much, if any, in the way of dealings with outsiders. But, as history demonstrates, a nation’s preference or desire to be left alone is hardly a defence against foreign involvement. So I assume that’s not a reason.
Was Japan simply felt not to be worth the effort? That the cost of invasion, or even ‘aggressive entreaties’, would not be offset by sufficient gain? Indeed, other than coal, I’m not sure that Japan even had anything that would have attracted foreigners and their armies. In contrast, it seems to me that those nations/areas that were colonized were those that were seen to have things like gold, ivory, rubber, etc.
Is that pretty much it, then? That potential invaders and traders felt Japan was simply not worth the effort?
If you count Japan as being “southeast Asia”, you’re not leaving a lot of “northeast Asia”, you know.
In all of “the far East” (henceforth defined for this post as “places between Pakistan and the dateline”) there were two very different types of colonies: commercial outposts and conquest. The Portuguese went for outposts, the Spaniards went for conquest, the British sometimes started with outposts and ended up conquering the whole area. The two places I can think of off the top of my head that did not get conquered are China, Thailand and Japan: all of them had strong centralized structures (“divide and conquer” wasn’t going to work), all of them had governments/ruling classes which learned new tricks from the new neighbors as fast as they could. In Thailand’s case, the French and British graciously decided to leave it as a “neutral buffer zone” - but this didn’t come out of thin air, it came after skillfull diplomatic manoeuvering from Thailand. In Japan’s case, the first contacts with Western Europe had been with Portuguese and Dutch merchants and missionaries (not sure when they had their first brush with the Russians); the Japanese, partly because the foreigners were so quick to backstab each other under any excuse, decided that a lot of what these people sold was not of interest - but by the time they “closed their borders” (only to some things, such as the religions), they’d acquired a good grasp of occidental science and technology including military ones: it would have been a horrible nut to crack, either by force or by guile. Note that during the time Japan was “closed” they continued to get scientific publications from the West: the doors weren’t closed, they were heavily guarded.
OOT: China had colonies along its coasts (Macao, Hong Kong and others) and while it did not get colonized by the Europeans, it had serious problems with the British and French “commercial” tactics (the Opium Wars). China had the first War on Drugs. And the second one.
This is only a WAG/question, but could it possibly be because of the relative lack of resources that the Europeans desired and the fact that it wasn’t strategically that important to them to be worth the effort? I’m also guessing that it was probably a lot harder to conquer or colonize a bunch of islands then countries that are primarily one big land mass.
The raw resources thing may be a fair point, but I’m not sure this is really true.
Most of the islands are a non-issue, they’re relatively small. By far the most work at the time would have been conquering Honshu, the rest is just cleanup.
You have to remember that, somewhat ironically for an island nation, Japan never had a strong naval tradition. The Japanese naval tradition was essentially that naval battles were land battles with moving pieces of land. They relied extremely heavily on boarding, and somewhat on arrow ships. They have a somewhat storied tradition of piracy along the East Asian coast, but not much of naval dominance.
Any naval power with a history of naval tactics and advanced technology, like basically all the colonial nations, could have rather effectively shut down any of Japan’s capability to reinforce from Shikoku or Kyushu, much less places as far off as the Ryukyu islands.
I think it comes down to the fact that it was too much trouble to really be worth the effort. Cracking post-Sakoku Honshu would have been tough. It probably would have been doable, but what would the point even be? Especially when there are easier and more lucrative targets elsewhere. In fact, I’d wager that by far the hardest part of conquering Japan would have been the potential of fighting the Portuguese and Dutch, and whoever else would have theoretically had an interest in trading with Japan, along with the Japanese. (This is kind of what happened in the Boshin war).
The Japanese did allow missionaries and trading posts from the Portugese, Dutch and British up until 1636. Then they closed the country to Europeans and executed all Japanese Christian converts. Anyone foreigners who landed on Japanese shores were killed. Even the skill of making firearms that the Japanese had learnt from the Dutch was abandonned.
This uncompromising attitude meant that foreign powers could not gain influence with local leaders through trade and religion and so were not able to exploit rivalries between different factions. When foreign powers developed steam powered gunboats that could blockage rivers and attack cities, balance of power changed. China was to make a series of trade concessions and found itself vulnerable to the new weapons of the industrial revolution. Religion formented rebellion and uprisings, the country became unstable. Japan meanswhile sent a series of delegations to the major european powers and the US and negotiated trade agreements playing them off against each other. At the same time the set about learning about this new industrial techology very quickly so they could obtain a similar military capability and were able to defend themselves.
I guess it helped having a centralised state, a facility for copying and leaders with diplomatic skills. Reversing the two centuries of isolationism was not without political unheavals. Fortunately this did not result the state being split up with different factions supported by different foreign powers, though there were some battles and it was a very close run thing.
Japan made quite an impression with its diplomatic overtures and like the Thais managed to head off gun boat diplomacy. The leaders of the Chinese, on the other hand, misjudged the situation, handled it very badly and the Empire became politically unstable and vulmerable. It was soon under threat of losing territory to the British in Tibet, the Russians the to north and the Japanese.
What do you do when a load of foreigners turn up from overseas in well equipped warships demonstrating massive firepower wanting to do business? Some countries played their hand well, others very badly.
I kept exceeding the maximum for the length of my thread title. So, eventually, to save space, and without really thinking about it, used the term “S.E. Asia”. That was clearly inaccurate. What I meant to say, and what most people are probably assuming, was whatever the region that includes India, Burma, Vietnam, . . . and Japan is called.
In terms of China not being “colonized”, yes, that is definitely true. That said, it was ‘economically exploited’ (or however you want to describe it) by the whole foreign-run (mostly British) opium importing business. I didn’t include it in the thread title, but I actually did refer to ‘exploitation’ in the OP. Still, I don’t argue your point.
Japan could boast an unusually high literacy rate for a pre-modern country in the 19th Century. And despite the general policy of isolation, they did allow for some trade with the Dutch. There was an official policy to acquire foreign technology and scientific knowledge. This was known as “Rangaku” and many argue that it helped prepare Japan’s intellectuals for the nation’s rapid modernization. Japan also spent a huge amount of money to bring Western experts to Japan who specialized in everything from naval tactics to music.
The Americans under Commodore Perry forced Japan to resume trading with the rest of the world, and some unequal treaties were imposed on Japan. And foreign influence certainly helped contribute to the domestic unrest which resulted in the end of the Shogunate and the Meiji Restoration.
Wikipedia has some decent articles on the subject:
Rangaku
Western Advisers in Japan
Convention of Kanagawa (Unequal treaty between America and Japan)
Some managed to escape persecution, the so-called “hidden Christians”, by methods which included using images that could be interpreted as either Buddhist or Christian. I saw a documentary which explained that these Christians would recognize each other thanks to the images: by identifying yourself as a follower of “the Son” (Christ) rather than of “the Mother” (the Buddhist Guanyin), you were identifying yourself as a Christian. Once freedom or religion was reestablished, some rejoined the Catholic Church where others kept their own practices. The second group is considered to be almost extinct by now.
Of course, the British, who were the world superpower for most of the 18th and 19th centuries, had Hong Kong as a naval base and a trading centre. I suspect that Japan just didn’t seem worth the trouble.
Pretty much all the major European powers forced similar treaties on Japan as well. And while not being “conquered” the treaties were pretty unequal (in that they’re literally refereed to as “the unequal treaties”). The only reason they didn’t lead directly to violence was that the Japanese had seen what had happened to the much larger country of China when it had tried to resist the Europeans, and so decided to go along with the unequal terms peacefully, at least until they could develop a modernized military to resist.
The industrial revolution gave the nations that had this technology a massive military lead and it gave rise to another phase of colonisation. The previous era technology of wooden ships, sails and muskets was not enough to deal with countries capable of organised warfare. The new equipment certainly could: heavy canon, steam powered gun boats, hanguns, breech loading rifles, later the machine gun and the military techniques to use them. The populous nations and empires of the East were a tempting target and there was a great competition between the industrialised powers to carve out spheres of influence in the East which had great potential for trade. Later the same thing happened with Africa.
They just had to be pursuaded to sign treaties. Japan may have been seen as more of a potential ally by some nations in the exploitation of China, which was reluctant to trade. It did not take the Japanese long to start invading neighbouring countries and sieze territory. Japan, was noted for its military tradition.
It was interesting that the Chinese thought that natural harbours like Hong Kong to be worthless. The sea was something for lowly fishermen. This was because the trade routes important to the Empire were all land based. The Japanese, being an island nation, saw the potential and set about building their own navy.
How they changed suddenly from a policy of strict isolationism to internationalism is intriguing. Perry obviously made quite an impression, but they must have had strong leadership as well to put in place such a radical change of policy.
Did not have resources worth taking (no extensive lands to grow tea, rubber, whatever)
Large and dense population already, so no extensive lands to take either.
Suicidal warlike ruling class (warrior class) that made conquest expensive.
As mentioned, Japan excluded foreign contact and visits until the mid-1800’s so no “foot in the door”.
Once backed into a corner by Perry and the Black Ships, they embarked on a modernization program which resulted in them becoming sufficiently industrialized to defeat the Russian navy (decisively!) in 1905.
China by contrast spent its time falling apart and fighting internally. It conceded small areas (Macao, Hong Kong, the foreign areas in Shanghai and IIRC, a port area near Beijing) which became footholds for actions like the opium wars, where drug dealing western powers could send armies to burn the Imperial capital.
Japan, IIRC, had given a small enclave to the Portuguese in Yokohama, but rescinded that when they decided they didn’t want foreigners around.
So Japan was lucky and smart, with emphasis on “smart”.
In Nagasaki harbor, actually. An artificial island called Dejima. But they kicked the Portuguese out after a few years and gave the island to the Dutch. The Dutch kept it until the mid-1800s.
I don’t think it’s a matter of ressources. Colonization happened quite late, and western powers didn’t try to subdue Japan any later than they did with other countries. But Japan “instant-modernized” in reaction, and this is frankly impressive, incredible even. One day they weren’t any more advanced than any middle-eastern or east Asian country ripe for the taking, and the next they were talking as equal or even kicking your ass.
So, for me the question is rather how could Japan pull this one out when apparently everybody else failed (and even typically put themselves in a worst situation when trying , in particular because they accumulated debts without making significant progresses). Without this remarkable reaction, I’m pretty certain western countries would have imposed as much inequal treaties to Japan as they did to China or Egypt,etc… and would have been perfectly happy raking in the money while being in control of pretty much everything, at least in practice if not nominally (the way it went for other countries was usually that they indebted themselves heavily paying western countries to help modernize the country, ended up bankrupt, and under threat had to give away control of their finances, trade, etc… to pay back, and with not much to show for it.)
Even without much natural ressources, western countries would have been pretty happy to for instance take a good share of the taxes and to decide themselves about trade policies as they did elsewhere. But Japanese somehow succeeded in building their own railroads according to their own plans, with their own steel and their own engineers in essentially no time.
Or maybe “non-central Asia.”